Windows 10 is keeping its new owners busy, as Microsoft has released the second “cumulative update” for the operating system in three days.
The update dated August 11th was billed as a “security update for Windows 10” and promised “improvements to improve the functionality of Windows 10” plus resolution for half a dozen bugs …

Re: Redmond's not been super-responsive of late.

Re: Redmond's not been super-responsive of late.

Probably taking a leaf out of the Apple book and learning to ignore requests from El Reg.

This Windows 10 is keeping its new owners busy is clearly wrong.

The only owners Windows 10 has is Microsoft. They have graciously agreed to let us mere mortals use their product under their T&C's that they can change any time they want. If they really wanted I am sure that they could stop anyone from using it.

Re: Redmond's not been super-responsive of late.

Re: Redmond's not been super-responsive of late.

"Who really owns your copy of W10 then?"

(Let's assume that we all know that the question is...) "Who really owns your license to use W10 then?"

Basically, anyone who pays for a copy or is granted a copy for having met the conditions for receiving a free copy. That Microsoft can revoke anyone's license on a whim might be enjoyable to write, say, or think, but doesn't have anything to do with events in the real world, where revoking someone's license to use Windows without really, really good reasons will mainly net Microsoft various lawsuits. I can't imagine that it could be done on any basis other than case by case.

This is essentially independent of anything in the EULA - because commerce is commerce and the EULA takes precedence of no laws whatsoever.

Additionally, in spite of anything in the EULA to the contrary, tech companies can not unilaterally, fundamentally, and substantively change the terms and conditions in the EULA. The EULA is (or perhaps it would be better to say "may in fact be") a contract but only insofar as it is binding for both sides. If they can broadly and substantively change the terms and conditions at will, the EULA becomes binding only on the end-user, and therefore can not be a valid contract.

Furthermore, while some terms and conditions in a EULA might be enforceable, others might not. No EULA is 100% enforceable merely in virtue of having been agreed to. Each provision must be enforceable and no provision of a EULA can conflict with the laws of the relevant jurisdictions. (Conversely, invalid clauses in a EULA do not necessarily invalidate the entire EULA.)

Of course, tech companies puts those terms and conditions in the EULA in the hopes that most people will be fooled. And although most people never even read them, there are plenty of people who fall for them. As we see.

Re: Me too

Trevor , I thought you made your living by providing maintenance for windows users, does this mean that you are moving full time to Linux systems and completely giving up on windows ?

Actually, I've mostly quit IT. While I keep a few clients around (I'm back down to around 25), this is mostly to keep my hand in the craft and have some form of legitimacy to what I write. I honestly don't think I do more than break even with any of them anymore. I make my money writing.

A few clients will probably still have Windows. The large ones that - to be frank - have other sysadmins to handle the day-to-day stuff. 80%+ of what I'm called in on today that is sysadmin related would be classified as either "datacenter architecture" or "something went kaboom and nobody else can fix it".

For the most part this actually does leave me working with non-Windows products. Linux (increasingly Debian as clients move away from RHEL thanks to the shitpile that is RHEL 7) on the server side and OSX (seriously, I've seen a crazy uptick in the past month, what gives?) on the desktop side.

Now, OSX is not joy to work with - securing this is proving to be a monumental pain in the ass - but I'm getting the hang of it.

For me, I've gone back to Windows 7. I think there is still Windows 10 on my little conference portable, but to be 100% honest I need to sent that back to Lenovo with a big "WTF this shitty plastic shell is disintegrating put a new one on" sticker anyways. I suspect they'll reset it to the Win 7 pro it shipped with, as they always seem to do OS resets when I send things in and don't want them to do so.

I have said multiple times that the only thing keeping me from really adopting Linux for all non-gaming roles was that the remote access protocols are a bucket of flaming hamster poo. This is still true, but the end of this miserableness is in sight. Weyland/Weston have built the freerdp server in directly, so we can finally use a protocol that actually works over crappy WAN links. That, and SPICE seems to have evolved to be almost not crap!

LibreOffice 5 is a huge step forward in usability for me, while Office 2013 has been a huge step backwards. (I have yet to try Office 2016.) Thunderbird is a bucket of shite, but if I can kick the exchange addiction, it just might do. Zentyal looks promising as a means to boot exchange out the door.

SAMBA 4 has finally reached "usable", and I no longer need Windows Server-based domain controllers for most things. I'm still waiting for a usable UI to configure SAMBA shares, but I live in hope.

Meanwhile LizardFS has provided a good scale out storage option for those looking to build additive storage filers with a single global namespace. Bye, bye DFSR, don't let the door hit you on the way out! And I don't even have to wait for Storage Replica, because I just don't need it anymore.

Scale Computing has taught me that KVM is just fine, thanks. And if I don't want to keep using Scale, I've found both OpenNebula and Proxmox are okay too. Nodeweaver is willing to sell me all-open-source hyperconverged (including OpenNebula-based managment) as a software-only item I can install on my own systems for next to nothing. That's fine too.

To be 100% honest, Outlook was the thing that was keeping me on Windows for so long. Not Outlook is a bloated piece of crap that crashed all the goddamned time, I have to use gsyncit in order to sync with my gmail, and that plug-in conflicts with my scheduleonce.com connector too often for my liking.

The calendar appears to be almost completely non-deterministic, even without the plug-ins and Exchange support for Android is best described as rubbish. Outlook means Office, and I am getting mightily sick of defanging Office's attempts to be "helpful" with each new install. No, I don't want you make fancy formatting decisions at the end of a pragraph, Office, I want <CR><LR> when I hit enter and not a goddamned thing more. And frak off with the smart quotes!

I basically want Office 2003. That was the thing that made me love Windows. It kicked everything else's ass in terms of productivity. Unfortunately, now Office 2003 isn't supported by Office 365, or newer exchange servers and is basically dead.

LIbreOffice comes in "portable" and I can run that right out of Dropbox. No taming the beast with each install. Bloody marvelous. Firefox and Chrome take my settings with them, so they're not a problem. Pretty much everything of importance is in Sync. Everything that's not important is in Dropbox.

What else do I use? Oh, yeah, Trillian. Trillian is cool, but there are a squillion great Linux alternatives. Oh, wait, nevermind, I can get that on Linux too. Skype. Skype goes on my phone, but there's Skype for Linux too. Ummm...ummm.....

Yeah, that's about it. There's lots of other things I use, but they all either have direct Linux ports, are browser-delivered, or have "good enough" Linux-based stuff. Or they are so infrequently used they work just fine as a VM-based item.

That leaves video games. I don't play often, but I have a diverse library. I hate controllers so that rules out consoles. This leaves me building Windows gaming rigs every 5 or 6 years. I'm okay with that. I'll pay Microsoft their pound of flesh in order to play my games.

Once Windows 7 can't be had, I'll move to Windows 10. When I do, I'll lock that SOB down and firewall it off from the rest of the network and treat it like the a toxic digital piracy-thieving piece of shit that it is.

But Windows for primary stuff? No. I just don't see the reason to do anymore.

Look, I'm lazy. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really lazy. I don't want to move off Windows 7. I'm comfortable here and life is simple. But the end is nigh. Windows 7 is going to get Windows XPed, and sooner rather than later.

The problem is, Windows 7 users have nowhere to go. In terms of software you mostly control, it's the end of the line. Now everything Microsoft is all cloud enabled, privacy-stealing bilge pumped from the abandoned mines at Redmond.

I either have to give up on any notion of privacy or control over my own data whatsoever or I have to learn to suck it up and deal with the clusterfuck that is Linux UIs. According to my own principles, the latter is preferable.

So yeah, I'm out. Windows 7 until I can't go any more. And as for clients, I won't take any new Windows clients. The existing ones I am going to try to get away from supporting Windows on the endpoint at all. Windows Server I might keep supporting, but mostly as a vessel for running legacy Win32 apps.

I don't like it, but the choices available are a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Which do you pick?

Re: @Trevor: Me too

Re: Me too

Well, at least you talked about using Google services and complained about privacy in two different paragraphs. That's a start.

On Linux if you are using more than one device and you need to keep them in Sync, Google is the only reasonably comfortable way to go.

Let's face it, everyone, including the most diehard of Linux users, uses cloud services, if only to keep calendars and emails synced across PCs and phones. That's where the privacy argument blows up.

So the question comes down to which company do you trust more to handle your data with some semblance if integrity: the one whose ad revenue makes up 90% of its total, or the one whose ad revenue barely registers on its income statement?

It really comes down to your last sentence:

"I don't like it, but the choices available are a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. "

I couldn't agree more. I feel old saying this but they don't build 'em like they used to...

Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich - which to pick?

Re: Me too

Exquilla works nicely in Thunderbird and the Lightning Calendar addon means I can do everything I need to on an exchange server.

I would say that once you let go of your obvious GUI needs - Linux becomes a thing of beauty and ease to administer on the command line - you don't need a GUI to manage samba shares but I'm sure you can find one if you require it.

A little problem as an example...

I just so happen to be doing battle with a PCB drawing package at the moment. It is the defunct Winboard from disappeared IVEX. To give credit to Wine Winboard certainly runs better on Wine than it does on later versions of Windows where it won't even load. It loads and apparently runs with no reported errors, missing dlls or anything, but using it is like trying to work through a thick brown fog. Where the background of the PCB used to be black with white grid dots, it is now mustard brown. Only the top and first layers are visible, the others are lost in the pollution. Don't even think about me unpicking the code of Wine and fixing the problem myself; I am not competent.

Codeweavers product produces the same result but they have at least been kind enough to look at the problem. Meanwhile I am considering the somewhat more complex solution of running Windows 2000 under VMPlayer on Linux to get a working piece of software before the hardware running W2000 gives up the ghost. VMPlayer because I am a VMware user running Windows 8.1 on Centos host because of Turbocad. I don't even want to try installing Turbocad under Wine.

There are legion examples of technical software that is in thrall to Windows. Another package from RS requires excel.exe as well! Don't get too optimistic about Wine on non-mainstream software.

@Shadmeister

Do as I do, run your Windows-only software in a VM and the rest on the Linux host. I also have CAD software that is Windows-only but with the appropriate configuration you can use dongles on the parallel port, etc, from a VM.

There's still good money to be made rolling back accidental Windows 10 updates and then nobbling GWX via uninstalling KBs or changing registry entries. And it's work that will last throughout the year as GWX gets more and more insistent. On day 364 I imagine a scheduled task will just start the computer up and install it anyway.

If it's free you are the product

Strange things that there is a lot of fuzz coming from the EU and European governments to protect the free users against Facebook and/or Alphabet and other reselling user data internet service company's

but they are blind or mute of the build-in spy-ware in WIN10 and may be in Android, OSi and OSX

Gotta love Windows 10!!

Every week since they've released it I have people bring in their broken computers following their borked Windows 10 upgrades. This will make me as much money as downgrading new Vista computers back to XP did :) I love Windows 10!!!!

No surprise

First it skips versions numbers ... now it seems to be skipping merrily in to la, la land, leaving nothing but gentle footprints of events which further prove to world+dog why they should stay the hell away from Windows 10, until Windows 11, or will that be 12 ... probably won't be 13, but they might jump to 3000.

Seriously. The way things are going at Redmond; just lay down a trail of the white stuff ... an exec will probably be along shortly to snort it up, and with then tell you all, while having a fit of the giggles ... and the troubling thing is ... it will be believable.

In the mean time, punters will be availing themselves of the cheap laptops currently being advertised on TV ... you know ... the ones to shift the over supply.

I don't expect to hear very much in the way of Windows 10 success until at least in to 2016.

It skipped version numbers because of lazy 3rd party app developers in the time of Windows 95 / Windows 98 who coded applications to look for Windows 9* rather the discrete numbers, and this legacy code is still alive in some large corporate applications.

Microsoft found this bug during early testing for Windows 9 so decided to move to 10 to stop any compatibility issues.

@ Adrian 4

"It skipped version numbers because of lazy 3rd party app developers in the time of Windows 95 / Windows 98 who coded applications to look for Windows 9*"

Ahhhhhh that makes more sense. I was under the impression it was to keep the alternating "Good OS" "Bad OS" that they've been working on since inception. And in order to release two Bad OS's, they needed to skip a good one.

It skipped version numbers because of lazy 3rd party app developers in the time of Windows 95 / Windows 98 who coded applications to look for Windows 9* rather the discrete numbers, and this legacy code is still alive in some large corporate applications.

I think that's a myth. I'd be surprised there was much 90s software around still that could run on Windows 7 even.

What happened to Windows Compatibility Mode? That could have taken care of the supposed "9n" windows version problem.

Microsoft should have dropped 32bit flavor OS in Windows 7, but when 8 came around they wanted it to run on underpowered tablets, so they kept it.

<i>It skipped version numbers because of lazy 3rd party app developers in the time of Windows 95 / Windows 98 who coded applications to look for Windows 9* rather the discrete numbers</i>

That's their story, sure.

But I was a beta tester for another piece of software (that shall remain nameless). The developers did the same sort of skip in version numbers, and internally admitted that the reason was that the competition's software had a higher version number. They thought that in the eyes of the public, higher number meant better.

If the competition's version number is 10, even if it's in a Roman numeral, could Redmond risk falling behind? I think not.

I don't expect to hear very much in the way of Windows 10 success until at least in to 2016.

I'm sure that Microsoft will soon be trumpeting success on the basis of large numbers of home user installs. And for the majority of home users, there's three simple things that make this inevitable:

1) Most/all users don't read and understand the EULA

2) Most are ill equipped to understand the privacy issues that are the major concern

3) "free" trumps all other considerations

On that basis I'd guess that Microsoft will see very rapid uptake of W10. Business will remain loyal to W7, and we can expect all flavours of W8 to be end-of-lifed as soon as indecently possible, in the hope of forcing the holdouts to roll over to W10.

Not a very pleasant scenario, but one that seem inevitable with most national legislatures "bought", and most privacy regulators utterly ineffectual.

That's potentially about 230K users.

Re: "Bank of America have already announced that they are deploying Windows 10. That's potentially about 230K users."

Given that MS have yet to release Win10 Enterprise, this sounds like a company who's senior management has been strong-armed by MS senior management into believing how wonderful MS is and how they just must deploy Win10 (are they still on XP and been considering OSX or Linux?); suspect MS has also got them to fund a bunch of people to work at MS on Win10 Enterprise...

MS has form in convincing the senior exec's particularly CIO's et al that helping MS is more important than looking after the needs of their own business.

Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

Meanwhile, the Windows 10 Update Badgerer has upgraded itself from "lying dormant in the system tray" to "popping up at me several times a day".

I never understood why I was supposed to "reserve my copy of Windows 10". Are they in short supply? Need another printing? And why is there no option, on this system tray doohickey, to "remind me to think about it in six months"? Because that would, just possibly, be a useful function.

In the meantime, they can pry Windows 8.1 from my cold dead hands. Yes, that's right: I actually like 8.1, and until 10 starts getting unanimously rave reviews, I'm not moving.

I have taken out all WU patches that concern Windows 1 0 and decided to temporarily disable WU altogether so as not to burden my bandwidth or disk space with 3GB of unwanted NSA-approved code.

Next year, when the "free" of 1 0 is gone, I may re-enable WU permanently. Until then, I'll be reviving it temporarily and poring through the proposed items with hawkish intent to root out anything that might try to bring any mention of 1 0 back onto my disk. When it is done with the upgrades I decide I need, it'll be shut down again.

And I will never install 1 0. I refuse to plug in to the Cloud and I refuse to go to the subscription model with MY computer and applications I have ALREADY PAID FOR.

You're shit out of luck, sadly. Unless you fancy moving to Linux or staying on an outdated OS which will slowly lose support over time, there's not much else you can do to stop the relentless march of the cloud and the subscription model at the moment. People seem to like it - music, TV and now software....

(BTW - not saying it's right - I also am nervous about the march of the cloud - am a Mac user at home and have all iCloud stuff disabled - the last bastion of non subscription for the moment..)

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

As with all malware that throws up irritating pup-ups, the solution is to uninstall it. I found that there was a certain pleasure in saying 'fuck you' to Microsoft by uninstalling the relevant updates, along with the others that helpfully 'prepared' my machine for the upgrade.

@Doctor Syntax - Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

I wonder if some of the AV vendors will bring out a product to do this - or make it an option in existing products.

A nice idea. Certainly, if the AV vendors were truly independent of the OS supplier their products should flag up the dodgy behaviour that the GWX and other updates exhibit.

But of course, they won't do anything of the sort.

I think the best we can hope to see is widely published tools (or even just scripts) that cleanly eradicate traces of the infection. Of course then we have the problem of trusting in random bods on the internet vs trust in Microsoft. Not much to choose between them.

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

...that's right: I actually like 8.1...

I had no issues with 8.1 either. I suspect most people who complained about it either didn't try it, or simply wanted to hate it for hate's sake.

I forcibly upgraded my 8.1 laptop to 10 over the weekend. (I wanted to try it out before I start getting nagged constantly to upgrade my main machines.) I haven't played around too much yet, but from what I see so far, it actually looks pretty nice. Obviously I disabled all the sending stuff to Microsoft crap while installing, and there are a few applications I need to re-register because the OS signature changed (I realised that's a test scenario I need to try out for my software), but other than that, so far I'm happy.

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

No issues with Win 8.1 ?! You cannot be serious.

For desktop users it's almost a complete abomination to use as 8.0. It's not just the tiles, it's the vast empty spaces which are even more amplified when using a 27" screen bought to increase productivity by cramming in more work windows.

Then there's the flavour of the decade, Flat Design...aaaargh!!!! Fuck off Flat Designers and tilers! (except for the one working in my bathroom at the moment)

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

Hmm, you've clearly not used it. IMO Win8 is an improvement on 7 with the caveat that you need to spend an afternoon sorting out the start screen (uninstall the crApps, create logical groups for your daily driver software etc) and learning some keyboard shortcuts (irony!). Use is exclusively on a multi-monitor desktop machine, no touch screens. It handles multiple desktops better than Win7 too.

Now, I prefer it to the restricted Win7 start menu design. I realise I'm in a tiny minority here tho ;-)

I will move to Win10 soon at work so I can test out all our software with it, but it looks like they've adopted a 'worst of both worlds' approach to some of the UI :-(

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

Hmm, you've clearly not used it. IMO Win8 is an improvement on 7 with the caveat that you need to spend an afternoon sorting out the start screen (uninstall the crApps, create logical groups for your daily driver software etc) and learning some keyboard shortcuts (irony!). Use is exclusively on a multi-monitor desktop machine, no touch screens. It handles multiple desktops better than Win7 too.

Well I have used it and would tend to take issue with some of this. The question is, has been and always will be why you need to bugger about with the startpanel, winkey combos and stuff when W7 did all that in a relatively logical fashion (it wasn't perfect but it required much less frobnication than W8.x). As for multiple desktops, there I'd agree if it wasn't for some of the third party addons you could use to overcome this. (To be brutally honest, many of the Linux UIs had this trick down years ago!)

Now, I prefer it to the restricted Win7 start menu design. I realise I'm in a tiny minority here tho ;-)

I disagree with your opinion but will staunchly defend your right to express it.

I will move to Win10 soon at work so I can test out all our software with it, but it looks like they've adopted a 'worst of both worlds' approach to some of the UI :-(

In some ways, yes. It's certainly an improvement over the startpanel of W8.x but the cut down feel of the main area felt inferior to the classic menu from W9x/W2K/WXP and I have no use for the tiled apps at all which was why I was glad to see that Classic Shell worked on W10. With that loaded, W10 felt much better. If it wasn't for all the snooping and the compulsory upgrades, I'd probably have left it on my test machine.

I'm with you all the way on the 'flat design' shite though...

Definitely. My biggest worry right now is that a number of Linux UIs are beginning to ape this look and feel (example - KDE5 screenshot).

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

+1 ...

I suspect 8.0 and 8.1 are fine for people whose existence consists of "arrive at office, check email, post amusing photo on facebook" but for normal bunsiness users, it's a disaster.

We purchased a couple of desktop machine from PC World for the girls that do our shipping. We're a small outfit and don't have dedicated IT support, but we do have some internal knowledge, which in Win7 days was enough to get a PC from the shop and set it up to work on our network, in reasonable compliance with company policies.

We do not allow our staff to cruise the net, log in to facebook or waste hours searching for stuff on eBay ... but with Win8 the new machines constantly bombarded them with this crap.

The useless "tiles" desktop whatever the hell it is called thing just keeps coming back, no matter how many times I switch away from it to our shipping application. Printer managment is retarded in so many ways.

It is probably OK if you are a iPhone user who wants the work desktop to look like their phone. but for normal business use, it's a nightmare.

I'm still running 7, I do a lot of 3D cad (Solidworks), circuit design and modeling, FEA, thermal simulations and similar, along with embedded C .. and frequently have the latop hooked up to a bunch of development hardware via USB/JTAG ... now why oh why would I want an interface that looks like a piggin' mobile phone?

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

The useless "tiles" desktop whatever the hell it is called thing just keeps coming back, no matter how many times I switch away from it to our shipping application. Printer managment is retarded in so many ways.

Install Classic Shell (for free). I haven't seen the tiles since the day after I got my laptop - and other than that it works perfectly.

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

@Def,

To quote Kevin Bennett from Facebook :-

Windows 10 every. single. thing. you. do, every keystroke, every word spoken in front of your mike, even your webcam, is recorded and sent back to MSFT. You might as well mount a camera and just send the stream to MSFT (and anybody that gives MSFT a buck for the footage) as that is EXACTLY what is happening if you take Windows 10..

Please note the last one where they did and in depth traffic analysis of a Windows 10 PC AFTER they "turned off" all of the switches under privacy AND turned off Cortana, result? It STILL sent everything you did to the MSFT servers. Sorry but if you don't want to broadcast everything you do to the world, or if you are a business with sensitive info? this OS should be treated no diofferently than malware. Stick with 7 or 8, avoid 10.

End quote. So, next time you're onanating in front of your webcam to some porn, smile for the camera! It's in the EULA that they can watch you doing that, and you're agreeing to it!

Re: Those of us who haven't "upgraded"

@Mark,

That's why I upgraded my laptop first - a machine I don't really use too much at the moment. I will be checking out the network traffic from it for the next few weeks, and will apply firewall rules accordingly (actually blocking everything and selectively unblocking things that I need to work). And not from the Windows firewall (although I will disable everything there too).

Because

Why do you need MS to provide this when Apple, Android/Google and Linux don't? Do you actually think 99.9% including IT staff have a clue what any of it means?

I get umpteen daily app updates on my Android device. Never an OS update. Guess what that means??? Crap sw development by app devs and an OS supplier who doesn't give a s***t about their own defects. MS does updates and you complain?

Re: Never an OS update

You never get an OS update on your phone because, although Google makes Android updates on a regular basis (and I suppose Apple does as well), your provider is not interested in pushing it out because that would put in peril all the other crap that they put in.

As for MS, we're complaining because it's not just patches to the system. It's going to be entire new functions, UI modifications, the works. And they've already fucked it up barely a week after launch.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

Windows 10 scans the contents of all connected devices. It reads your emails, it captures every keystroke, it knows your location and sends it all back to Microsoft. Every file name, mp3, video, docs, text files is read. They have the ability and your permission to change settings on your machine and to disable programs and peripherals it doesn't like. You won't need passwords because Microsoft will know every last private thing about you. All this is contained in the T&C you clicked through at install time. That is the big difference in Windows 10. It is big brother on steroids, enjoy.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

That's the privacy policy for collecting telemetry in the PREVIEW/Insider programme so they can monitor crashes and feature usage, which is entirely what the Insider programme is all about. Even the Inquirer url has a clue in it.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

Did you even bother reading the article, 95% of what was written stated that nothing seemed to important, that there was some dubious stuff being moved around by system services and windows update. Quick, Panic, windows update phoned home....

Where is the actual proof that it is actually sending "your personal data".

If you have something you want kept private use an appropriate system not one that is designed for the unwashed masses. Golden rule : If you want to keep something private, then keep it private. Private means on an unconnected system....and encrypted.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

When you interact with your Windows device by speaking, writing (handwriting), or typing, Microsoft collects speech, inking, and typing information—including information about your Calendar and People (also known as contacts)—that helps personalize your experience. This information improves your device’s ability to correctly recognize your input, such as your pronunciation and handwriting. You can turn the Speech, inking, and typing setting (which is called Getting to know you) on or off in Settings.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

They capture words that you type, voice commands to Cortana, searches you perform and send them to MS's servers "to improve the user experience".

And yes they do know where you are.

My house is connected to the internet ONLY intermittently via a 3G link, paid for by the byte, so I'm careful about how I use it. I live over a mile from a cell tower. My mobile phone, (different network) has GPS built in, but has NEVER been connected to that 3G network.

I installed the preview W10, then visited a place with free wifi to download updates and the relevant maps.

On returning home, I asked the Maps app to show me where I was. It zoomed in EXACTLY on my house. Not just the vague area or even the street - the dot was right over my living room.

So now I know why Google's streetview cars were hovering up SSIDs as they toured the country. They sold the database to Microsoft.

Re: Am I particularly unobservant...?

@bbt (nice name by the way). You have asked a technical question about a well know OS on the El Reg forums. You can't honestly have been expecting a reply that answers the question? What you can expect is one or more of

* an implication that you are a spawn from hell for associating with <insert OS of choice>.

* a suggestion that you move to the true path of <insert OS of choice>

* The implication you are a fanboi (Apple), fandroid (Android) or just brain dead (Windows)

Why 4 hours? they strangely loaded on a different wifi connection. How the fuck does that even work? Absolutely nothing in common with the websites and all browsers had same issue yet another laptop on windows 10 in the same house on the same wifi didn't have the issue.

The kicker is that I can't disable updates so if (or when) it decides to update it I will have to do the same again... Oh and device manager is a fucker to find now.

Re: Device Manager

If you step back a moment and view this from the perspective of someone not steeped in Windows' idiosyncrasies, is it obvious that a "Manage" option in a file manager is actually the way to manage the system's hardware and software resources? Or that there's a magic incantation known only to those who have the non-existent user's manual?

Re: Device Manager

Not coming from windows 7 or linux it isn't.

I'm sorry but when I click on settings I just automatically expect it to contain my computer settings I also expect to find it in the control panel. I got to it from the system32 directory but lets be honest here it's not obvious where it is. I didn't go Windows 8 because I hate the lack of start menu and the stupid mouse movement to get to to the bar to the right hand side of my monitor. I'm not anti-microsoft but I am anti-fucking about with things for no reason while making my life more difficult and adding extra clicks here and there that I just don't need or moving things so I have to go and find them again when they were perfectly fine where they were.

R.E. web pages (other reply) it wasn't https/http and I tried absolutely everything, adware/malware/firewall/remove network/remove hardware/other network/fixed ip./browsers/extentions/proxy/settings example sites are www.jdwilliams.co.uk and simplybe though after a couple of days microsofts own websites couldn't be reached. It's an aspire one laptop so if anyone else gets the problem it should save you many hours of frustration. There was obviously a problem and still is with the driver as there were 3 versions of it and Windows 10 hasn't been out that long.

Re: I am guessing you use BT as your ISP

Nope, virgin media and the websites loaded with no problem on the other laptop in the house on the same network, both were upgraded at the same time though different laptops of course.

A tracert even had me getting out of virgins network hanging for 3 attempts then moving to BT onto manchester (where website is hosted) then hanging at the last hop.

Like I said, I have never seen anything like it. It almost seems impossible, connect to other wifi it works with all the same settings. Fix by rolling back the driver, how can a driver cause what I suspect to be a packet issue and have that issue with only a superhub and only on certain webpages?

I did try both https and non https versions of websites, I even installed an add-on to force https.

“includes improvements to enhance the functionality of Windows 10.”

Re: “includes improvements to enhance the functionality of Windows 10.”

I do not think they would make ANY mention of "improved functionality" in that case, they would simply take a page out of their version of the BOFH excuse generator for patching. After all "correcting several buffer overflow errors" sounds perfectly plausible. Maybe the vague "improvements to enhance the functionality" clause simply is a euphemism for "bricks/borks fewer machines than the previous update"

Or if you do not want to be cynical, it might refer to some modest algorithmic improvements somewhere in this huge amount of code. I have often made a series of incremental improvements to code (improving memory efficiency, slight improvements to speed, etc) in image processing and visualisation code in various releases, and not bothered to specify each and every one.

Whatever the meaning I will not be installing it on any machine of mine any time soon.

Re: Updated 10 machines so far.

Journalism's Haaaaaardd

You could have dropped the file list into Excel and sorted on Date to get a sense of where the changes have been made since the last update. Granted it doesn't tell you why the change has been made and what the changes are. ( I know that a diff on a sorted file list would also weed out other changes but I was satisfied with the results above.)

Apparently two files were changed in AppX deployment between the 11th August and 14th August updates. ( Appxdeploymentextensions.dll and Appxdeploymentserver.dll)

Re: Learned behaviour

Having detested Win 8 (Win 8.1 was just as bad) I approached Win 10 with a healthy does of skepticism, but after giving the preview a quick going over before the Win 10 release I decided to give it a go on a non-essential laptop. While it's not as consistent as Win 7 (various settings are on different styles of screens, just pick one and go with it MS) it's livable with.

Once you've disabled all the privacy settings, got rid of OneDrive and the awful telemetry stuff, uninstalled the default Apps, then there's actually quite a lot to like. I don't like that you can't uninstall certain Apps (Cortana, XBOX etc) without resorting to Powershell (and some not even then). But perhaps the wishes of the majority may actually allow these to be uninstalled at some future point.

With this first laptop install going well, I've since done upgrades followed by clean installs and straight-forward upgrades on numerous laptops and PC's and not had a hitch at all. So kudos to MS for the upgrade routine.

All in all, I'm happy with it, the clincher for me was the free upgrade to their last OS. Last OS? Well, perhaps not as I don't see MS cutting off a major source of income, but we'll see.

To those who are sitting on the fence, I would say, either use a non-essential PC or build up an old one and give it a whirl. There are plenty of pages showing you how to lock the new OS down, or you may not even care. Either way, I'd give it a try.

Words mean things.....

Disabling Apps, =/= the same thing as disabling Privacy Settings... MicroSoft have already delivered you an OS with those Settings disabled... To better monetize you... e.g. The logic here would be to ENABLE these, and not to disable them... Unless your logic runs along the lines of a double negative, and therefore would in fact be re-enableing them again...

Best part of the EULA... MicroSoft reserves the right to re-enable these "Settings" after a time, behind your back, and with little warning... In the hopes that nobody will take notice of it...

regarding MS ignoring El Reg

I would suggest that MS believe this site to be actively against them, mistaking reasonable debate of the issues that come with this "upgrade" for pure antiMS propganda.

That MS believe that ignoring ElReg will reduce it's significance shows just how out of touch they are with the community and their customers.

The cognoscenti come here for all sides of the arguement so they can make up their own minds about the issue and generally mistrust the marketting types who have repeatedly shown themselves to be damaging to the industry in general.

If MS and apple and any other company wish to remain viable in this field they need to remember they all made money with our support. We, the reg readership, are who is consulted during the purchasing process and even when we are initially ignored then you can guaranty that we will make certain that our "told you so" is heard everytime it goes wrong.

If you wish to retain our support and recomendation then transparity is paramount, if you do not like what we surmise without your input then by ignoring us you are making your own worse enemy.

We are neither blind, stupid nor powerless and treating us as if we were is going to be a very expensive option for you.

So my advice to MS is to remember that few people trust salesmen and others who get paid to promote products, they do however trust us because we are typically sincere and care about this subject for itself and our own self esteem.

Re: regarding MS ignoring El Reg

Re: regarding MS ignoring El Reg

I would suggest that MS believe this site to be actively against them, mistaking reasonable debate of the issues that come with this "upgrade" for pure antiMS propaganda.

I wouldn't exactly say they're *ignoring* El Reg. I have seen comments and up/down votes appear here that could have only ever have originated from a setup that seeks to promote MS, irrespective of the discussion so they do seem to be trying out something. Alternatively, maybe I'm just paranoid and give them far too much credit.

I owe Websites like the Register a deep debt of gratitude the like of which a simple Thank you! just really doesn't cut it. Were it not for Sites like this that have the balls to say the thing that need to be said. Then I fear a lot more would have fallen pray to this bit of Malware a.k.a. Windows 10.

I'm sorry but, as much as I'm willing to go with the flow... Windows 7 will likely end up being my last MicroSoft OS. If I want to be treated as a brain dead fashionista then I'd get an iBook/Mac. That I really want to get back to the halcyon day of my yoof (C=64 BASIC), coding. I suspect that the simplest window here would be some Linux OS (Mint), and a gcc+ Complier. The only things I might need are a few Books from the Public Library. This has alway been something I've hated about MicroSofts PC Business. In that its nearly impossible to do any actual coding without the additional cost of some Software Package.

Most places in London are only 100 yards away from a pub. It's F.A.B. (flaming alcoholic Britain!)

Back to the subject at hand, M$ are, naturally, going to appear glibly apathetic as to the quibbles we bestow upon them, since they know that all PCs will eventually be running Windows 10 as hardware is replaced. Their spyware will slowly become ubiquitous, and Orwell's prediction will come true.

I don't know about the rest of you lot... In so far as the IT bits I have to look after I've already read my Lusers the riot act, and told 'em that Windows 10 would be on their heads. As I plan to only support Windows 7 till ~2020. Before figguring out a migration path to take us over to Mint Linux... Hopefully the PC as we know it will have morphed into something smaller, and cheaper by then.

something I've hated about MicroSofts PC Business. In that its nearly impossible to do any actual coding without the additional cost of some Software Package.

WTF? Notepad is built into the OS, and the SDK's (which include compilers and libraries) are free to download, and have been for at least the last 10 years. More recently Visual Studio, has been available free in a community edition

Quite so. Personally, I have been dabbling in Python and never paid a single penny (or multiples either). Or you could always try one of the GNU systems (gcc is pretty popular, I hear). Just download a copy of Notepad++ or similar and a compiler and away you go.

I'm losing track here..

Windows 10 is an upgrade from Windows 8 (or thereabouts), which then got patched, and that patch got patched, without any indication why, so depriving people who manage systems for a living of the data they need to allow or hold fire on rolling it out throughout the company (because past experience has suggested doing it ASAP is not a spectacularly good idea).

That's not the behaviour of an Enterprise level provider, but of a 11 year old wannabe coder who just screwed up.

Re: I'm losing track here..

Re: I'm losing track here..

Because with Unix you have bigger issues to deal with. The peers writing the code are too often amatuers who have no concept of testing. you are the beta tester so why complain when MSFT moves in that so-often-lauded direction?

Re: I'm losing track here..

While true that Linux is almost in perpetual beta.... It has / had stable LTSB long before M$ came along and suddenly discovered it. The difference is Linux is largely free, and the Community regardless of how amateurish you might find 'em to be. Should NOT be confused with a MEGABILLIONS Software House that has traditionally demanded top dollars for their Warez.

Re: I'm losing track here..

Because with Unix you have bigger issues to deal with. The peers writing the code are too often amatuers who have no concept of testing. you are the beta tester so why complain when MSFT moves in that so-often-lauded direction?

And according to a rumour

Re: And according to a rumour

No rumour, that's covered in their EULA:

We may automatically check your version of the software and download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices.

Re: And according to a rumour

or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices

I so love it when it's no longer me who is in charge of purchase and IT deployment decisions but an untrusted 3rd party which demands absolving them from ANY responsibility and liability whatsoever as mandatory requirement to use their products.

Honestly, I don't know why companies have lawyers if they don't see this as a massive operational risk. That stupid little one-liner in their T&Cs is IMHO enough to bar it from coming near anything sensitive.

Think I'll delay updating

Now that I've discovered how to effectively delay updating Windows 10 (you simply disable the Windows Update service), I'm going to give it a week or so until Microsoft's army of guinea pigs out there have tested it thoroughly. If there's a problem, it'll rear its ugly head soon enough.

Re: Think I'll delay updating

Binned a Win10 install

It wouldn't open files I could see in preview, or any of my PDF readers/editors; that's how wrong it was acting. Cost me re-downloads of some photo-editing applications, too, some lost email and (of course) "overages"on my monthly bandwidth.

Verizon's top plan for *new* subscribers [not me] is 12 GB per month. That's just four Win10 installs, eh?

allegedly it is

allegedly it is to fix Windows Store and TIFKAM AP issues. However afaik those sort of magically disappeared earlier on August 14th...just saying. http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-third-windows-10-cumulative-update-said-to-fix-store-issues/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61

Can't win...

I like, how all prior versions of Windows brought all the complainers out of the woodwork saying Microsoft aren't quick enough to address issues and release patches, yet now they're doing the opposite they still get complaints.

I guess this'll always be the way with internet commentards, along with those who are inexplicably concerned about Microsoft's security policies yet are happy to go along with Facebook/Google/other giant company...

Keep it real.

Am I the only One....

Patiently waiting for the OS Numbers for August?! I really loking forward to see where the Shift to 10 is coming from. Windows 8.x (As seems most likely!), or if it really is more even with Windows 7 Users.